2002’s Dahmer opens in a chocolate factory.  As the opening credits role, the camera lingers over the machinery effectively pouring, molding, and wrapping chocolate.  Much like the human body, the machines are set to do everything efficiently and automatically.  The only reason anyone works at the factory is to keep an eye on the machines and to make sure that they don’t break down.

A new worker at the factory is introduced to a veteran of the machines, a friendly guy named Jeffrey (Jeremy Renner, in his first starring role).  Jeffrey shows the new guy how the machines work and he flashes a somewhat friendly smile.  He seems like a nice enough human being.

But, of course, we know different.  We know what the title of this film is and, therefore, we know that the smiling man at the factory is also an infamous serial killer and cannibal named Jeffrey Dahmer.  We know enough to be nervous when, in the very next scene, Dahmer is in a department store and asking a young man (Dion Basco) if he wants to come back to Dahmer’s apartment so that Dahmer can take some pictures of him.  The man agrees and we watch as Dahmer drugs the man and then drills into the man’s head.  When the man, in a dazed state, manages to get out of the apartment, the police respond by returning him to Dahmer.

The film flashes back and fourth, between Dahmer’s life as an alcoholic cannibal in Minneapolis and his adolescence as a gay teenager from a dysfunctional family.  In the past, Dahmer steals a mannequin from a department store, tries to hide his homicidal urges from his confused, if well-meaning, father (Bruce Davison), and picks up the hitchhiker who will become his first victim.  In the present, Dahmer invites a man named Rodney (Artel Great) back to his apartment but, instead of automatically killing him, Dahmer instead talks to him about being alienated and shunned by society, almost as if Dahmer is trying to justify his own abhorrent actions to a future victim.  Rodney proves to be a bit more intuitive than Dahmer realized.

In many ways, the structure is similar to Ryan Murphy’s recently Netflix miniseries about Dahmer.  Many of the same incidents are detailed, including the time that Dahmer’s father demanded to see what Dahmer was hiding in a box.  Of course, Dahmer manages to tell the complete story in under two hours while Murphy, for some reason, dragged things out to ten episodes.  If Murphy’s miniseries sometimes came dangerously close to making excuses for Dahmer’s crime, David Jacobson’s film leaves us with no doubt that Jeffrey Dahmer was a monster.  In the film, Dahmer spends his time with Rodney trying to justify his anger and his murderous impulses, just for Rodney to continually shoot him down.  If Murphy’s miniseries often seemed to be too stylized for its own good, Jacobson’s film is directed in a near-documentary fashion, with the grainy and harsh images creating a pervasive atmosphere of evil.  The film may explain the motives behind Dahmer’s crimes but it never attempts to excuse them.

Of course, today, Dahmer is mostly known for being an early film of Jeremy Renner’s.  This was Renner’s first starring role and he received an Independent Spirit nomination for his performance here.  (As well, Kathryn Bigelow cast Renner in The Hurt Locker on the basis of his performance.)  Renner gives a haunting and frightening peformance, playing Dahmer as someone who suspects that his murderous impulses are wrong but who has given up trying to control them.  As played by Renner, Dahmer is friendly and good-looking enough that one can understand why people were willing to go back to his apartment but, at the same time, there’s always something a bit off about him.  Even when he’s surrounded by people, Renner plays Dahmer as someone who knows that he’s destined to be forever alone.

Dahmer is a haunting portrayal of evil.